NASA Reproduces Building Blocks Of Life In Lab


WASHINGTON: Studying the origin of life, NASA scientist have reproduced three key components of human hereditary material in the laboratory.

They discovered that an ice sample containing pyrimidine, when exposed to ultraviolet radiation under space-like conditions, produced the three essential ingredients of life - uracil, cytosine and thymine.

Pyrimidine is a ring-shaped molecule made up of carbon and nitrogen. It is found in meteorites although scientists still do not know its origin.

It is the central structure for uracil, cytosine and thymine which are all part of a genetic code found in our RNA and DNA.

“We have demonstrated for the first time that we can make uracil, cytosine and thymine non-biologically in a laboratory under conditions found in space,” said Michel Nuevo, research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Centre, Moffett Field, California.

“We are showing that these laboratory processes, which simulate conditions in outer space, can make several fundamental building blocks used by living organisms on Earth,” he continued.

Nobody really understands how life got started on Earth.

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Source: IANS